CONCLUSION Bayesian Life Flashcards
What should you do if you think you’ve found a theory of everything?
Diagnose yourself with mania and check yourself into a psychiatric hospital.
What percentage of emails sent in the world are potentially spam?
Between 35 and 70 percent.
What is the prior probability in the context of a spam filter?
The prior probability is the assumption about the percentage of spam emails.
How does a spam filter update its probability assessment?
It updates using new information about the content of emails.
What is the phrase that a spam filter might associate with higher spam probability?
Penis extension.
What did Fred Hoyle compare the chances of evolution successfully producing life to?
A whirlwind passing through a junkyard and creating a Boeing 747.
Is evolution a random process?
No, evolution is not random; it is guided by natural selection.
What does Price’s equation describe?
How the frequency of a characteristic in a population changes based on relative fitness.
What happens to copies of a gene that enhance an organism’s survival?
They tend to make more copies and survive to the next generation.
What is a genome seen as in the context of Bayesian reasoning?
A prediction about the world.
What does the frequency of a gene in a population represent?
A prior probability.
What influences the updating of a gene’s likelihood in evolution?
The survival and reproduction of organisms carrying that gene.
True or False: Confirmation bias is always irrational.
False.
What influences the trustworthiness of information from different political parties?
Prior probabilities associated with those parties.
How do peer reviewers judge scientific papers differently based on the authors?
They are more likely to accept papers from Nobel-winning authors than novices.
Who said, ‘All models are wrong, but some are useful’?
George Box.
What do our mental models of the world contain?
Both quotidian and abstract concepts.
What is prediction error?
The discrepancy between expected and actual outcomes.
How does the brain process predictions?
By making predictions and updating them based on new information.
What is a ‘flow state’?
A state where predictions are high-precision and come true consistently.
Why do older people become more set in their ways?
They have a richer, more precise model of the world and require more information to shift their beliefs.
What does the Bayesian framework suggest about consciousness?
It provides a perspective on how we experience the world as predictions.
Fill in the blank: Evolution works to minimize _______.
Prediction error.
What does the Bayesian process describe in decision-making?
The optimal way to integrate new information with prior best guesses.
